Darkness at Noon

Part Two opens with an extract from Rubashov’s diary in which he meditates on historical “truth” and the inability to know who is “right” and who is “wrong” in the present. He makes reference to Machiavelli’s The Prince, noting that a copy of the book lies next to No. 1’s bedside and that the Movement has replaced “the nineteenth century’s liberal ethics of ‘fair play’ by the revolutionary ethics of the twentieth century” (98), which are based on “universal reason” or “consequent logic” (98). As Rubashov explains, in the context of this revolutionary ethics, “subjective good faith is of no interest. He who is in the wrong must pay; he who is in the right will be absolved” (99), regardless of their virtue; wrong ideas must be punished with death lest they be carried over to the succeeding generation. At the end of the excerpt, however, Rubashov reveals that even strict adherence to an ethic of consequent logic is itself an act of “faith” (101), and that he no longer has faith in his own logical deductions.

Chapter 2 narrates a conversation between Ivanov and his colleague Gletkin about Rubashov, over whom they disagree. In particular, Gletkin disagrees with Ivanov’s methods—of allowing Rubashov the time and materials with which to come to a logical conclusion so he will capitulate.